


For Every Fear that Shakes your Peace

by hollyandvice (hiasobi_writes)



Series: Holly's Round Six Trope Bingo Card [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 06:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7303174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiasobi_writes/pseuds/hollyandvice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bitty has a secret. It doesn't have to stay a secret. He just likes it better that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Every Fear that Shakes your Peace

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [here](http://ilove-agapo.blogspot.com/2015/01/for-every-fear-that-shakes-your-peace.html). Part of my Round Six Trope Bingo Card.

It’s easy, so easy, to let himself be held like he’s the most precious thing Jack’s ever touched. Like he’s the earth and the sun and the moon. Like he’s _everything_. Jack kisses the same way he does everything else—with a single-minded intensity and focus that leaves Eric weak in the knees, leaning his weight against Jack. It’s so easy, like breathing, like sleeping, like baking, and Eric knows that if he gets any say, he’s going to be doing this the rest of his life. Jack’s fingertips are feather light on his cheek, warm and present and everything Eric’s never let himself hope for. It’s easy to press back into Jack, to let himself be wholly in his body in that way he never lets himself do usually.

It’s easy, until it isn’t.

Eric feels it, in the split second between Jack leaving and his text arriving. The twitch and ache of the muscles in his back, and oh. _Oh_. Eric squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to fight down the joy that threatens to overwhelm him. It’s easier than he thinks it should be, the fear of not being able to see Jack again enough to fight his emergence. He breathes—in and out and in and out and in—until the tingle in his back subsides into nothing more than a memory.

He opens his eyes slowly as soon as he’s regained his composure, and spares Jack’s text half a glance.

**I’ll text you.**

Eric can feel how watery his laugh is, can feel how his fingers shake as he takes three tries to type out a reply. **So you said**. Part of him is scared that this isn’t the time to be chirping, but the rest is sure it’s the only safety he can find.

**Haha.**

Eric snorts at the typical response, the itch in his back finally subsiding. He pockets his phone and heads out front to catch his shuttle to the airport. It isn’t until he’s making his way through security that his phone buzzes again. He ignores it until he’s on the other side, and swipes the notification.

**I miss you already.**

It makes Eric’s throat go tight, nerves and uncertainty twisting in his chest. He swallows, and his fingers start shaking again. He’s not sure how long he stands there, backpack slung over his shoulder and phone in his hand, disrupting the flow of traffic through security. In the end, it’s another text from Jack that startles him out of his reverie.

**Sorry. Was that too much?**

Eric shakes himself out of his stupor, and fires off another text lightning fast. **Of course not, Jack! You just gotta give a poor boy time to adjust**

**Sorry.**

**Ain’t nothing to be sorry for, Jack**

**I just wish I hadn’t waited so long.**

The question’s in the tips of Eric’s fingers—how long have you known?—but he forces the thought down and focuses on the matter of hand. **I’m just glad you were braver than I am**

When Jack doesn’t immediately reply, Eric pockets his phone and heads toward his departure gate. He leaves it there until he’s pulling it out of his pocket to turn it off for departure, and that's when he sees Jack’s reply.

**You’re the bravest man I know.**

It puts Eric’s heart up into his throat, his whole body going rigid in his tiny airplane seat. _But I’m not brave,_ is all he can think. _I’m a coward_. It leaves a pit in his stomach and a tingle in his back for the rest of the flight.

——

Eric doesn’t think Jack meant to make such a big deal out of missing him, but it’s a constant, low-level presence in their texts. Eric aches with the knowledge that Jack wants this as much as he does, that Jack actually wants to be with him, and Eric tries not to let it go to his head. The itch in his back is too hard to fight down.

So when he forgets himself for a moment a week after graduation and invites Jack down for the Fourth, Eric almost hopes Jack will decline. It’s not that Eric doesn’t want to see Jack, it’s that he doesn’t know if he’d be able to keep himself in check if he did.

His phone buzzes. **I’d like that.**

Eric’s heart is in his throat and and there's an itch in his back and he doesn’t think it’s going to get any better until he makes it through Jack’s visit.

——

Eric insists on driving out to the airport alone to pick Jack up, if only so he can have his few, selfish moments in the parking garage to pull Jack down into a kiss that will tide him over through the visit. His back tingles and twitches and aches, but he ignores it, letting everything Jack is and does fill him up from the soles of his feet to the tips of his ears. Jack responds in kind, pressing his hands over Eric’s shoulder blades, almost like he can sense the tingle and tension.

Almost like he can hold Eric’s wings back.

Eric squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to let himself hope.

When they finally draw back, Jack’s eyes are half-lidded, and his lips are turned up in a tiny smile. “Hi,” he breathes out over Eric’s lips.

Eric can only laugh. “Hi,” he replies, voice soft so as to preserve the moment for as long as he can.

Jack presses another kiss to Eric’s lips before stepping back. “We should—” he licks his lips. “Should we get going?”

Eric wants to say no, wants to keep Jack all to himself for this blessed week, but he knows he’d never get away with it. So he swallows and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, we should—” He makes an aborted gesture toward the car. Jack sways toward him, like he's still thinking about diving in and ravaging Eric the way Eric knows they both want, but then he huffs out a sharp breath through his nose and steps back, prompting Eric to go around to the other side of the car. Eric clicks the button on his keyring and they both slide into the car, sitting in silence for a brief second before Eric gets brave and leans across the center console to kiss Jack one more time. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Jack just smiles back.

Eric ignores the sensation in his back the whole way home.

——

His back is absolutely aching by the time he drops Jack off at the airport a week later, a mess of tension and knots that he knows won’t subside for days. But it was worth it to be able to spend those nights, curled up in his bed with Jack on the air mattress, their fingers entwined while they talked, voices whisper-soft to keep from waking his parents. It was worth it for the way Jack had wrapped a hesitant arm around his hips while they watched the fireworks and let Eric lean into him. It was worth it even for this, for saying goodbye to each other at the airport, a soft kiss over the center console and a hug as Eric helps Jack get his bag out of the trunk.

“It’ll be August before you know it,” Jack murmurs against Eric’s temple, and Eric just tightens his arms around Jack’s shoulders and nods. Jack draws back, searching Eric’s eyes with his hands on Eric’s cheeks. Apparently finding whatever he was looking for, he nods, pressing a quick kiss to Eric’s forehead before stepping back and turning away toward the airport. “I’ll text you,” he throws over his shoulder, and Eric can’t stop the watery laugh he lets out at the promise.

——

The tension in his back doesn't subside all year. It gets better when he's on the ice, when he's baking, when he and Jack are separated; it gets worse when he's on the phone with Jack, when he lays on Jack's bed beside him, the night Jack points up at Bitty in the stands after he scores his first NHL goal. It becomes a constant through his entire junior year, and Lardo's the only one that notices his increased dependence on painkillers.

"Bitty, if something's wrong—"

He shakes his head. "Nothing's wrong, Lardo, I swear. It's just. It's not something I can talk to people about."

"No one?"

He bites his lip. His mom had always said that things got better after she told Coach about her wings. That having someone to talk to made all the difference. At the time, he'd thought she'd meant being able to talk to her partner, but as he looks at Lardo, he wonders if that wasn't it at all. He can't tell Jack—not when Jack's the entire _reason_ he's facing emergence again—but maybe.

Maybe he can tell Lardo.

He swallows. "Can you keep a secret?"

——

When Eric Bittle was born, the nurse had placed him in Suzanne's arms, smiled at her and her husband, and stepped out to give them a moment. It had turned out to be the biggest blessing of the day. As soon as the nurse had left, Eric had opened his eyes, smiled up at his mother, and sprouted wings. Both parents knew it was a possibility, but they'd thought they were safe when they'd found out Eric was a boy.

"It's been generations since a boy was born with wings," Suzanne's mother had assured her, and that, they'd thought, would be that.

Suzanne's own wings had sprouted when she was four and promptly been severed. They hadn't come back since, but there was always the possibility of an emergence, always the possibility that their daughter might have the same affliction. She'd told her husband before they got married, reminded him of the possibility before they'd gotten pregnant, but he'd just smiled and promised to love their daughter no matter what.

But Eric isn't his daughter.

Suzanne had looked up at her husband, surprise and joy in her face, but he'd just turned and walked away. It was a pattern that would follow Eric through his whole life.

——

"They've… I've gone through emergence twice since I was born," he says, voice hushed and uncertain.

"But… why do you have to cut them off?"

Eric shakes his head. "Keeping your wings is a sign that you want to be taken back into the fold, that you want to let them bring you in."

"The fold?"

"Angels," Eric says quietly. "It's a sign that you want to go back to the angels."

Lardo's quiet, her eyes searching Eric's face for a lie. She doesn't find one. "And you don't? Want to go back to the… the angels?"

Eric's not sure what look she sees on his face, but Lardo doesn't ask anything else.

——

Nine months later, Lardo gets to see first hand what Eric's been so afraid of, his wings huge and bloody behind his back while Jack gapes at him.

Lardo's face is hard and angry when she storms into the room. "Dammit, Jack, _this_ is the kind of shit you pull on my graduation?"

"I didn't-- I wasn't-- What's going on?"

Lardo just snatches Eric's phone off his desk, unlocking it and scrolling through his contacts. "What's the doctor's name again Bits?"

"Monahan."

"Got it." She puts the phone to her ear, insisting on speaking directly to Dr. Monahan, that she's calling on behalf of Eric Bittle, and then steps out into the hall to make the arrangements.

Jack turns back to Eric, silently asking for some sort of explanation. Eric doesn't have one. He's too exhausted, too desperate to get the damn wings off his back, and all he wants is to be held in his mother's arms. Jack seems to sense Eric's discomfort, and wraps him up in his arms. It's not his mother, but as a second option, it's a pretty damn good one.

"Tomorrow," Eric says against Jack's shoulder, voice low and soft. "I'll tell you tomorrow."

Jack just presses a kiss to Eric's temple. "Whenever you're ready. You waited for me. Now I guess it's my turn."

Eric laughs, the memory of the promise that had set his wings exploding from his back in the first place strong and sure in the forefront of his mind.

_I want to come out. I left a statement for PR to release tomorrow. I'm tired of hiding. I want to be able to be out with you in public, so show the whole world what you mean to me. But I'll tell them to hold off on it if you want me to wait._

"Okay," he says, relaxing against Jack. "Not tomorrow, then. But I promise I won't make you wait too long."

Jack tightens his hold on Eric, his face pressed into Eric's hair. "Please don't."

Eric smiles back, even though he knows Jack can't see it. "I won't."

**Author's Note:**

> [Come hang with me on tumblr!](http://hollyandvice.tumblr.com/)


End file.
